


Rust and Stardust

by Wraithlike



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: Dammit I'm a Doctor, Homesickness, Medical School, Multi, Nurse - Freeform, OC, Riverside, Romance, Star Trek: Into Darkness, Starfleet Academy, coward - Freeform, the enterprise
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-08-06
Updated: 2013-08-08
Packaged: 2017-12-22 15:33:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/914910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wraithlike/pseuds/Wraithlike
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nurse Cally DeChangy rejoins Starfleet after a personal tragedy with understandable trepidation. What with regrettable drunken make-out sessions with her crotchety superior officer, tagging after her idiot brother and generally trying to come to terms with her new status as a coward, it seems that she couldn't have picked a worse time. Introduce an ex-evil overlord, and she's having some HUGE doubts ...</p>
<p>With a focus on Leonard McCoy, James Kirk and eventually Khan.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**It is 2257, a year before James T. Kirk will take the helm of the Enterprise during a clash with Nero.**

Callista DeChangy had always been the sparky, confident one among the nurses. She could hold her own in any situation with any dissenting patient, or keep the good graces of an overseeing doctor with a smile and a joke. She was unflappable, scoffing, amusing and inarguably well-intentioned. 

**It is 2257, and Leonard McCoy is waiting for his Academy days to end, so his life's work can begin.**

She was the cheeky, popular nurse who got what she wanted with a hair flick and a few well-timed, incontrovertible facts – something which people laughingly called 'a deadly combination'. 

**It is 2257, and Callista DeChangy, recently of Riverside, Iowa, thinks she has this and every other world at her feet.**

It had came as something of a surprise when she discovered that on top of all of these positive, acceptable, workable traits, she was also, unexpectedly, a coward. 

* * *

**It is 2257. And the Farragut is a ship in flames.**

Years of Starfleet training had somehow not prepared her for _this_. As the ship juddered in a way entirely new to her beneath the study black boots which had seen her through so much, Cally found herself shamefully pressed to the wall, unable to bring herself to answer a call to arms or to simply run to any perceived safety. She was simply – stuck. Crew members whose faces she knew well were running past her down the corridor, not stopping to shame her for her weakness, or to drag her along on their tide of desperation. She stared at them as they ran past, her mouth dry and her heart rattling in her ribcage like a ringing alarm clock. 

'There's a fire! FIRE!' someone was screaming down the corridor; species, age, and sex indeterminable beneath the soot and rips and blood. A _fire_? What was _happening_? How had the ship gone from 0 to catastrophe in so short a space of time? With supreme effort, Cally peeled an arm from the wall and her stomach lurched sickeningly at the thoughts of her future. 

Sweat was damp in her tawny hair , down her back and making her hands slick and useless. 

'We need a doctor!' someone else called down the hall, their voice faint among the rest of the noise, but she still heard it. She was trained to hear it. The rest of her body shrugged itself from the wall with a graceless lunge and she stood on shaky calves legs, eyes massive with fear in a sweat-streaked face. Being a nurse in Star Fleet had never meant disaster to her before. It had meant injuries and panic at times, but never casualties and flames. Wards and most importantly, _order._

_Go, Cally, go, this is your job_ , a voice was urging her in her head but something squeamish had seized hold of her at this crucial moment and it wasn't until she heard an agonized plea for help that her stumbling legs could regain some strength and propel her towards the scene. It was just as awful as she had expected. 

Engineering looked like a war zone, full of electrical fires and wires hanging like streamers from every battered console. People were either running or bleeding, and there didn't seem to be room for anyone who wasn't engaged in one or the other. It was with a sense of wonder that Cally found herself beginning to tremble, and could just find enough control over her mind to hate herself for it. 

'Please,' someone moaned and there it was – the blissful switch into autopilot which she had been waiting for since the emergency began. There wasn't a single thought skittering across her brain unrelated to her task at hand, binding limbs, giving medication, barking orders at orderlies and spreading whatever burn lotion she could find on the worst victims. Nurse Cally would complete her task as capably as she always did. The private loathing would come later, she promised herself. 

An empty promise, as it turned out. Cally would remember the scene every day of her life, but she could never be quite sure about it. Had this been the moment her adult life had begun, or simply the moment that she began living it? A voice croaking her name, the endless seconds as she dropped a bundle of bandages and cast desperately about to find the man whose voice urged her closer. The new, cold sweat springing up on her neck and face and torso. The noise of the disaster dimming in her ears, and then, the moment – pure, blind, screaming fear when she finally found him. Her Jack. 

Broken glass cut her knees as she dropped to the ground at his side, which would leave scars for good. Her hands swept gentle as butterflies across his chest, the evidently crushed sternum, the chalky face. The humming, inconceivably massive realisation that even with her years of training, the best technology they had and whatever steely resolve she could muster, she couldn't fix him. The thought spun dizzily in her mind as she looked at him, his familiar brown eyes and shaggy hair, a face aged years by this pain. 

'Cally,' he managed again, with an edge of relief, even as she saw blood awash on his teeth and her breathing began to stutter along with his. She remembered his baby teeth, if that could make any kind of desperate difference. 

'I'm here, Jack,' she returned, her voice choked up to its highest pitch, her hands gently roving his face, his shoulders, a scream building inside her all the while. Jack opened his mouth again and gurgled his final words, with his sweet, tired eyes grateful for hers. 

'Thank you,' he managed, blinking up at her, even as something in them began to dull and a shuddery, final breath was in and out, for good, before she could fully make sense of it. 

'Jack?' she tried, blankly. 

'Jack?' she tried again, shaking his shoulders as much as she dared, eliciting no response. She drew back just a fraction, to look at his face and feel his pulse and convince herself that before her was the dead body of Jack Mahony. The air was acrid in her lungs, the noise unending and everywhere, but she neither saw nor heard a single thing over the gasps that were her breath or the pumping which was still her heart and not his. She was conscious, looking at him, of the scream still growing inside her, and as it finally burst out of her, taking form in his name, she reached the edge of the cliff in her mind, and felt herself slip over without a whisper of argument or complaint. 

Cally DeChangy was 21, and her first taste of death would colour the rest of her life. It was the first time that she realised that she was a nurse who had failed, when it mattered the most. 

**It is 2257, and Callista DeChangy is declared Unfit for Duty. Other lives go on, but not hers. It will be 2259 before life begins again.**

**She waits.**


	2. Part 1 : Chapter 1

**Part 1 : The Dusty Iowa Plains**

* * *

**It is 2259, and the wait is almost over.**

Winona glanced anxiously out of the window across the wide open Iowa plain. The sun was setting, crimson flaming, and the wind had a slight chill on it. A change in the air, she had heard on the news. Maybe a storm on the way. Or maybe just her wildly over-active imagination – it always flared up when she was feeling on edge. 

'I'm sure that Cally will be here in a few minutes,' her son James assured his small audience, carelessly. Winona shot him a piercing look. 

'Come on. They're working her to death in that place,' she sighed, her brow furrowing suddenly, before she remembered herself and turned to her son and his guest, with the Southern courtesy as much a part of her bones as her breeding. 

'Some tea, James? Mr. Spock?' 

James T. Kirk was leaning dangerously backwards on one of the pine dining chairs in his mother's kitchen, turned towards the work-area. His first mate Spock was sitting stiffly next to him, very silent. He looked politely at the woman offering him a beverage. 

'No, thank you. I wouldn't indulge at such an hour,' he nodded. Kirk shot him a disgusted look. 

'Stop being such an old lady, and have some tea,' he demanded paradoxically, and Spock blinked in offence. Kirk ignored him and turned to beam at his mother. 

'Yeah, hit me. And one for my buddy, too,' he told her, as if daring Spock to argue. The half-Vulcan sighed, a long-suffering sigh, but made no move to protest. Winona smiled, and was just setting their old-fashioned kettle on the hob when a noise caught her attention. 

'Oh!' she started, peering down the worn road outside. From down the drive came the sudden unmistakeable purr of an engine. Winona's ever-beautiful face relaxed, and she arranged the kettle peaceably, a smile settling happily across her features. 

'She didn't know you were coming, James,' Winona emphasized, wanly. She shook out her sandy hair. 

'I didn't want to set her up for any possible disappointment, you know …after last time …' 

His mother trailed off, but her meaning was implicit. He had missed Cally's 21st, two and half years ago, after a very assured promise, and before things had started to go wrong. He had thought he could swing it and pay her a visit, but he had been wrong, and hadn't yet made it up to her. 

And he wasn't naïve enough to think he didn't have to make up for it. Girls were all capricious and all the same. Especially the ones you wouldn't think to be. Cally was as sunny natured as anyone but she could be a hellcat when riled. 

James stood up, his chair scraping the tiles of the floor. Spock eyed him suspicious, and moved to do the same. He was a creature of habit, and when in a different situation, liked to mimic the behaviours of those around him. James rumpled his own sandy mop and took a few steps towards the door, as the motor roared and died in the yard. 

'Be prepared,' his mother advised, looking up shrewdly from the biscuits she was arranging on a plate. James grinned, threw open the door and sauntered out to the sight before him. 

Callista, a tawny haired young woman, with blue eyes, and smooth, densely freckled skin was shaking the dust of the road off her clothes, her bike leaning in a haphazard manner on its stand. She was slender, dressed in ankle boots, a khaki skirt, a peachy shirt open over a tank top and pulling a green scarf off her head, specks of dirt floating about her. Pretty in a gentle, natural way. 

James didn't say a word, waiting for her to turn to the door, capturing the twinkling in her eyes and returning it with the twinkle in his own, laughing at her cry of surprise and rushing toward in tandem with her to capture her in his arms and spin her around, half-siblings with the closeness of twins. A closeness truly born out of necessity. 

She laughed like there had never been anything funnier, over-excited, her smile too wide and happy to be classically beautiful, Spock supposed, her nose scrunching with mirth, her hair messy, eyeliner smeary. Imperfectly perfect. She opened her mouth and words spilled out in warm American tones. 

' _Jim_! What're you _doing_ here? You could have _called,_ I would've skipped work! Ugh, Tibs, you're such a dork!' 

'And RUIN the surprise? Yeah, because that's like me,' James grinned patronizingly down at her. She rolled her eyes, before the grin cracked even wider at the corners of her mouth. 

How long are you staying?' 

James shrugged. 

'We're staying about a week?' 

Her eyes widened. 

'We? _Did you bring a girl?_ ' a spark leaped to light. James chuckled. 

'Close enough. I'd like to introduce my first mate, Mr. Spock.' 

Spock had been standing in the doorway for this exchange making judgements on this sibling of James' whom he previously been unaware existed. Thus far he had concluded the following: a) that Tibs was clearly a nickname for James T. Kirk, b) that this sibling though sharing genetic qualities was clearly only a half sister, c) that she looked very familiar. 

She turned her dark blue eyes to Spock and both made the connection at once. 

'Mr. Spock!' 

'Ms. DeChangy.' 

There she was, a student of alien languages in the academy, years ago. A promising student. A student who had graduated well. One with … promise. 

_Why was she still here?_

Promising students didn't get left behind. This was all highly unusual. Students like DeChangy went on to crew ships, to work for the good of the galaxy. She had shown more than promise, she had shown initiative, talent, intuition. She had been a sure-fire member of the force – one who would blossom into a valuable asset. 

His last memories of her, when he thought back, had been her hanging back after a class, her uniform neat, her hair pulled sharply back, her skin paler, largely bereft of the freckles which now defined it. She had been asking questions – intelligent questions – about the species they were studying. Her blue eyes bright and black lashes making them look like a sky at home. She had passed with honour, gone on to study elsewhere. 

She looked different now. 

She smiled shyly at up at him, extending a hand which he shook quickly. 

'You two know each other?' James asked in disbelief. 

'Mr. Spock was my teacher in the Academy,' Cally summarised, subdued all of a sudden, turning to her brother jerkily. She smiled quietly, the same way Winona did, as James slipped an arm over her shoulder and led her into the house. 

'You poor thing,' he muttered sympathetically, making her giggle, and raising his eyebrows at Spock, who quirked one in return. 

James' mother looked more like her daughter than son, Spock realised. He had seen the files and it was true – James truly was George Kirk's image. His mother's softer features sprang to life on the face of his sister. 

Spock passed over watching the siblings to study instead Winona's face. To catalogue the joy shining there and classify it as being wholly due to her children together at last. Truly a mother's pride. For a man who had lost his mother before he truly appreciated her, it was a difficult, mesmerising sight. 

The joy was his mother's face in duplicate. 

**Author's Note:**

> First chapter of my many-chaptered Star Trek fanfic. I've already posted a bit of it on fanfic.net so here we go!
> 
> Hope you stick around, enjoy, and tell me what you think of the beginning of it! It is focussed mostly on McCoy, Kirk and Khan. 
> 
> Until next time, my friends.


End file.
